I did a little accounting today. I looked at the 3 ICOs that I bought into, Kin, COB, and ENJ.
I freely admit that I got caught up in the euphoria of the ICO craze. That craze has passed -- at least phase one has passed, and people are now waking up from their hangovers.
People like...me.
I invested 10 ETH in each of the above referenced coins. ETH has been hovering around $300 for what seems like forever. When it breaks out of resistance, I think it will rocket up to $500 pretty quickly, but that is another story.
As of today, my:
-COB (Cobinhood) is worth 23% less
-ENJ (Enjin Coin) is worth 60% less
-KIN (Kin, for the Kik platform) is the worst, down 66%!
Still, I believe in them all. What else can I do but believe? I own them, and and there is no point in selling now, at a loss. When I bought in, I bought in for the long run: 5 ~ 10 years. I firmly believe that we are in the first half of the first inning when it comes to the cryptos.
As far as the future goes, anything could happen. To continue with the baseball analogy, we could have a no hitter, or we could have one of those monster games that ends up with one (or both) teams scoring in the double digits.
The future remains unknown, and importantly, unknowable. From our current vantage point, all we can do is speculate.
Cobinhood is a no fee cryptocurrency exchange that will be launching later this month. They are right here in Taipei, so you must understand that I am partial to them. But not only because of location, but because of no fees.
How will Cobinhood make money without fees? They're going to offer margin trading. But not like in stocks, where margin is capped at 50%. Cobinhood will be offering 10x leverage! Welcome back, Jesse Livermore. This is the second coming of the bucket shops, with a population of the entire world.
Enjin Coin is a "customizable cryptocurrency and virtual goods platform for gaming." I'm not personally into gaming, but a buddy turned me onto it. I believe the concept is solid. But it is still down 60% as of now.
Kin is the biggest disappointment of all. I have not been following the latest developments closely, but I sense much discord in the community. From the various discussions, it seems to me that Kik rushed to market in order to capitalize on the ICO gold rush that was happening at the time. They announced just before the China ICO ban, and that really had an effect... They didn't raise as much as they wanted to.
But furthermore, they didn't have a plan. They launched as an Ethereum ERC-20 token, but now they want to change blockchains?! Because Ethereum can't offer the volume and speed they will need. As a result, their price is off 66% from the ICO.
I haven't paid super close attention, since there is nothing I can do really. I'm already in, and I'm not selling. The only thing that I can hope is that the management team gets its act together and figures its sh*t out.
So to return to my original point: You can always buy cryptos on the free market after their ICOs, and after they start trading. The Market itself offers a better evaluation of price, after the ICO occurs.
In conclusion, I have two things to say:
I'm never buying into any ICOs again
Never say never.